


Somnium

by mofumanju



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Ayakashi, M/M, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 07:03:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12812214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mofumanju/pseuds/mofumanju
Summary: Saving Eichi is the only thing that matters.An AU in which Keito is an alchemist, Eichi is Eichi, and life is too short to waste time in the real world in an attempt to save his life.





	Somnium

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was supposed to be my nanowrimo, but real life is mean to the kind ones, so I failed, but I'm still going to write this fic no matter what, so I hope you'll like it - if you are ready to suffer a bit. Only the first and the last chapters will be from Eichi POV since I'm a fool and I don't think when I write. Those who have me on twitter mind remember my blabbering about this Au a while ago, blame it all on Philosopher Keito, because that's what everything started with.

It sounds like the sweetest melody, the gentle breeze coming from the sea and tracing invisible lines between the maple leaves. The rustle invades the air, conquers it, gifting the surroundings with a soothing atmosphere, reds and yellows mingling with the soft pink of a sky that will soon turn into darkness. Music is coming from the center of the city, but it’s far, too far to disturb that peace that can only be found around the outskirts, away from civilisation. The further he gets, the darker the sky turns, giving the path he is walking through a touch of magic: sparkles of mana are leading him towards his destination like old friends being sure he gets safe wherever he is going, and they look like fireflies, gold burning in the air like a flame that has no intention of dying. His feet are bringing him towards a small log cabin, enlightened by lanterns - really, he feels like he has stepped inside a fairytale, and maybe he is, after all. It’s been a while since the last time he brought himself around there and now, breathing that air that already smells of incense makes him feel in another world.  
  
He loves it. It feels like home.   


A dim light is reflecting on the glass of the tiny windows facing the road, the typical trembling of candles shaking the shadows inside the house. He is sure of what he’ll find once he’ll crack the door open, because it’s always been like this, after all - year after year, things have never changed. There are very few certainties in his life, and this is one of them, maybe the one he is most sure of - together with the fact that doom is hanging over his head, and will take his life when he less expects it.    
If he keeps waiting for it, maybe Death will never show at his door. At least, this is something he really can’t help wishing for. As someone loves to say, though, he should stop living in the world of dreams, and face reality for what it is. 

Shaking his head, and letting a smile bloom on his lips, he steps closer to the door, his pace getting lower until he stops, knocks on the door, and doesn't get a reply.

As expected.

The door cracks open, creaking, and the gentle light of the candle touches his feet and welcomes him inside that small house, the smell of incense intensifying under his nostrils.

“Ah, Keito, when will you learn…” he sighs, his head shaking in disappointment as he takes the first steps inside and closes the door on his back. It has been long, since the last time he was able to get there, but he is glad to notice how nothing really changed: books are scattered everywhere, covering the floor, the desk, creating barriers where they are not needed, piles and piles of manuals left unopened who knows since when. Sometimes he believes that room is stuck in time - and honestly, he wouldn't be surprised. His eyes wander for another moment, meeting blue butterflies cruelly pinned on a board, deprived of their freedom for the sake of science, or for an unrequited embellishment, he is not really sure. He loves them, though. As he loves anything around him at the moment - human being sleeping on his desk included.

“Keito,” he nags, but his voice is still low, as he gets closer to the desk. He raises his head a bit, just enough to see a mess of green hair spread over the man’s arm - he looks so cute, when he sleeps and sends his awful side to the dream world as well. The first instinct is to touch it, brush it gently to invite Keito to get back to the real world, and oh, that’s what he does, after all. Keito might be tired, but he doesn't really like to be ignored - not when he escaped his manor to get there despite better judgement. “It’s time to wake up, Sleeping Beauty.” 

A soft huff leaves Keito’s lips, and it's amusing to see how he opens his eyes and raises his head a bit to look at the source of that touch. His eyebrows frown for a second, before his head drops again between his arms. Slender fingers play with strands of green hair, and a soft chuckles fill the air in the room, while the first of who knows how many candles burns itself to death.

“... why are you here, Eichi?” is the first sentence leaving Keito’s mouth, a muffled, tired sound that Eichi manages to hear just because that's nothing new, the first line of a script they play every time they meet. Slow steps bring him behind his friend, hands slipping on his shoulders and down his chest, in a hug that Keito doesn't fight back - Eichi knows it is not because he is too tired, but Keito wouldn't never admit it.

“How mean. Is this your way to welcome your guests? I might get offended.”

Keito’s back raises and lowers fast, a sigh covered by all those layers of clothes before his mouth. Eichi takes his time to give a look at the desk, at all those books and glittery words floating over the papers covering most of the space around his friend. They shine in gold and bronze, creating words Eichi can't read - and still, he is conscious of the fact that they are all for him.

They always are, after all.

“You should stop straining yourself like this, you know? You'll get old too fast and die before me, and we have already talked about this, haven't we?”

“And you should stop running away from home and make your servants crazy...”

“Who told you I ran away? Is this the trust you have in me?”

“Please, Eichi. I never trusted you to begin with.”

Another chuckle leaves his mouth, as Keito pushes a bit to stretch his back - Eichi accompanies him until he leans against the seatback, but he doesn't let him go, hands pushing gently over stiff shoulders. “You shouldn't be so reckless. What if-”

“What if you shut up for a moment, instead of scolding me for something you can't control? I am the one being fine between us, you know? You look awful.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn't a compliment.”

Keito’s head bends back, meeting Eichi’s chest. From there, Eichi can silently admire those long eyelashes dropping shadows over his friend’s tired eyes, golden freckles enlightening green irises as the flames around them shake. Keito’s eyes close again, a hand running to cover his mouth as he lets a yawn escape his lips. 

“You should get a proper sleep, Keito. You are really going to consume all your energy, if you keep working this much. It's unnecessary.”

“It's not.” 

They both shake their heads, even if for different reasons. Eichi finds in Keito’s head a place where to rest, and his hand goes to take the monocle off, putting it on the desk before he decides it’s time for Keito’s world to turn dark for a moment, palms pressing against his eyes. 

“Still, I don't think you want to become useless because of overwork. Because that's what's going to happen soon, if you don't listen to me for once, you stubborn idiot.”

Silence follows soon after, but Eichi can feel Keito’s shoulders raising and relaxing again his stomach, under his hands when he leaves his face to go back to massage him - and he knows he has won against him, because Keito’s body language is so obvious, and he is probably just too tired to fight back. Keito bends his head, resting his eyes against his palms, and when he sighs his muscles just relax as well, as if they were deprived of all the stiffness accumulated during the days of work. “Besides, you should surrender.”   


“I have no intention to, so stop it.”

The rustle of Keito’s clothes fills the air for a moment and, for the first time in a time that Eichi felt on his skin like years, their eyes meet - Eichi sees flames, in those green irises, flashes of determination in the form of freckles of gold. Tilting his head a bit he smiles, one hand leaving Keito’s shoulder to find its place on his cheek.   


“You don’t have to try so hard. You can’t always fight fate, Keito.”

“Stop wasting oxygen to tell me what I can and I can’t do, Eichi. I won’t stop just because you’ve already given up. I haven’t yet. I won’t anytime soon.”   
The dim light of the candles make their surrounding warm, almost romantic. Eichi can’t stop biting his lower lip, as a knot of pain forms in his throat - but he can’t allow himself to show his weakness before his friend, not when he fought so much to leave the manor and reach him. He doesn’t want to be sent back, not now.    


“If you keep doing this, I’ll start to believe that you can really save me. Stars are born and die everyday, Keito. One less won’t make any difference, will it?”

Time runs faster, for him: clock hands turn without control and drag him towards his end, illness consuming him, consuming his core to the point that everyday could be his last, if he is not lucky enough. He doesn’t want to burn out yet, and still he doesn’t know for how long he will able to fight.

He doesn’t know for how long he will taunt Keito with a nightmare they are sharing since they were children. And the worst thing, above everything, is that Keito doesn’t want to let it go.    


“It would for me.”

Silence follows those words, a heavy blanket falling over their heads, making oxygen burn fast. The gold and bronze of Keito’s notes on his scrolls shine under the light of the candles, destined to exhaust their flame in minutes - just like his life, after all. Eichi doesn’t hate it, though, as he soothes his soul with the soft sound of Keito’s breathing, calm, slow, keeping his feet to the ground.    


“You are so stubborn, Keito,” he then whispers, bending his head enough to touch his childhood friend’s head with his own, and letting his lip go just for a moment, air pulling out his lungs all too fast. He understand him, he understand the need to keep him alive, to exorcise Death by working for hours just because sleeping sounds too scary at times, but… “You love to scold me so much when I strain myself, but you’re the worst at practising what you preach. If you strive to death, what will it be of me, mh?” He knows it, he knows that he can make Keito fall with simple words that get right to his heart - he loves to stroke it gently, instill on it that bit of guilt that in the end will make Keito crumble. “If you really want to keep me in this world, maybe you should learn how to take care of yourself first, don’t you think so too? I will rule over these lands soon, after all. You should obey to my words without a flinch.”

“Please, that won’t work on me.”   


The chuckle that leaves Eichi’s mouth is way too soft to be the fruit of such a heavy discussion, and still he doesn’t make anything to stop it, letting him reverberate in the air and dance between threads of gold, mana breaking into a thousand fireflies before they dissolve into nothingness.    
It reminds him of himself. How funny.   


“I just want to be sure you’re okay, Keito. If you keep overdoing yourself and drink all those weird potions you keep experimenting on yourself, I am really afraid I’ll be the one to bury you in the end. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, just do it for me, at least. It would lift a weight from my heart, knowing that you are not being a reckless child because of me.”   


He knows he just need to spend a few seconds pressing his fingers on those tense shoulders, before Keito gives up and finally relax against the seatback on his own accord, and not because Eichi keeps pushing him against it. The tiredness in his sighs is pretty obvious, and even if he wonders for how long Keito hasn’t closed his eyes and have a proper rest, he doesn’t really want to ask. “Good,” he whispers, abandoning one of his shoulders to play with green strands again, trying to give the man under his hands at least a bit of dignity. Another candle dies somewhere in a corner of that room, allowing darkness to eat another bite of light, and cast deeper shadows all around them.    


Eichi leans closer, finally wrapping his arms around Keito’s neck, nuzzling affectionately against his cheek. It always ends like this, with him grasping on that body like if it was his last hope - and isn’t Keito is only hope, the only one who still struggle so much to find a way to save him from a fate which has been written since his very first wail? It’s a curse, the one he has, cast over his family when not even his parents were alive, under the shape of an illness that finds no cure in the realm in which he’s born, in the Earth that welcomed him as if he was its son even though he was as weak as a flower in winter. “Now, what if you stop working and come out of here? The Sun has already gone to sleep, so I don’t see why you should stay awake in its place.”    


“You won’t let me go until I give up, will you?” Keito sighs, and Eichi nods against his cheek, giggling softly as his forehead finds a perfect spot on his friend’s shoulder. He doesn’t need to answer, because they both know how this day is going to end, and since Eichi feels well, once in a while, he is sure Keito won’t want to ruin that being the stubborn man he is - at least for once. “Okay, okay. You win. Are you happy now?”

“Absolutely. Oh, Keito, what would you do without me? I just came because I knew I would have found an exhausted man waiting for me at his desk. You never let me down.”   


“I sense some mockery and won’t accept that, Eichi,” Keito replies, his tone a bit harsh, but the sound of his book closing right in front of his nose tastes like victory on the tip of his tongue, so he can bear with that surly side of him. After all, Keito is Keito. The soft peck on his cheek proclaims the end of his teasing for the day, and as he lets Keito go he straightens his back, looking outside the window to smile at the first fireflies dancing in the new darkness, paper lights turning on to trace a path of warm oranges to the center of the town.    


“I’ll wait for you outside,” he claims, walking through the books, turning around only when he gets in front of the door to smile at him. “Everybody misses your grumpy face, so you’ll come home with me today.” And oh, he sees him, sees his mouth opening to object, but he doesn’t give him the time to. “And I won’t accept a no as an answer, so spare your strengths. You’ll need them to deal with Wataru, you know.”    


He brings a hand to his mouth to hide a chuckle, while the other one runs around the knob of the door to open it, fresh air brushing against his cheeks and turning them pink. Keito groans, flopping again on the desk in despair probably, but it’s too late for whatever retort he has now.    


It’s a good day.

 

Stretches of water reflect the lights around them, shaking them, turning them into magic show; it’s art at its finest, driven by the forces of Nature that shake the surface and break the light in particles that, reverberating in the liquid, become golden dust before it reappears again somewhere else. It’s fascinating, to Eichi’s eyes, how something so simple can generate such a wonderful performance without any human help. His hand run through the cold water, destroying for a second the shiny spot resting on it, before it reappears again - a small firefly finding rest on the palm of the slightly wet back of his hand. Everything looks wonderful around them: Eichi is sure this is how he would feel if he was inside a fairytale. Tori and Tsumugi’s voices are filling his ears with a nice melody, disturbed once in a while by the gentle rustling of the tree leaves when the wind blows, by the jabber of the servants who, once in a while, come to check on them.    


He wishes there were more days like this one, where nothing really happens and even he can pretend to be a normal man, lifted by the curse of his body and the fear of closing his eyes forever. It is nice to spend sometimes outside his room, breathing clean air instead of that sickly atmosphere that rules in his room on a daily basis. His eyes drift towards Keito, sitting not too far from him, but enough for him to miss the words he is sharing with Wataru - it is such a strange sight, but in a good way, so he doesn’t mind if they talk about their little secrets away from him.    


He is sure he doesn’t want to know, in any case. Keito barely speaks to Wataru, so if he’s doing it on his own accord, the topic must be something he shouldn’t know about - something that would upset him, probably - as if the thought of Keito spending his nights awake to find an escape from his already set fate wasn’t upsetting enough. Tori distracts him from his thoughts, at least, when he jumps behind him and with his tiny hands starts to play with golden strands of hair, pulling it back, braiding them to place small alyssum flowers here and there.    


An ephemeral dream. He wonders if he’ll look like this, the day he’ll die - he wonders if Tori will take care of him like this even when he won’t breathe anymore.   


“I’m glad you feel good today,” that cute voice breaks through his thoughts, stealing a smile from his lips. “Even if I get to see you everyday, I don’t really like it when you are feeling sick.”   


Eichi smiles, bending his head a bit, enough to catch the pink of Tori’s hair, a touch of colour in the darkness of the night made less scary by artificial light. He’s not really sure how he should reply to that - his condition is so unpredictable as of late, that really, displaying happiness for something that might vanish at any second seems a waste of time, a waste of hope he is not ready to spend to submit Tori to an inevitable delusion. Still, the corners of his lips raise, offering the younger boy something to grasp to - after all,  isn’t Keito doing the same with him, offering him the chance to be saved, and at the same time putting him in the condition to have his hopes violently crushed once he will see how performing miracles isn’t something even he can do? His smile is soft, gentle, and still he can perceive a tremble shaking his lips - he is thankful to the fireflies to make it look like an effect of their light.    


“I’m glad too, my cute Tori,” he finally lets his voice out, reaching for the soft, peachy cheek of his companion. “I hope it’ll last for long. Enjoying your company outside is better than anything I had to experience lately…”    


Tori nods, that childish enthusiasm still moving his gestures when, after tying Eichi’s hair, sits next to him and bounces against his back. “I’ll make sure you won’t have to come back to your room ever again, if not to sleep. Maybe I should ask Hasumi-san to teach me a thing or two…”   


“I seriously doubt he would, you know how he is.  _ Stay away from my stuff or you’ll lose a limb or two _ , it’s something he has always told me since we were children, you know? Alchemy is scary, Tori, it’s better to stay away from all those awful potions. You don’t want to become like Keito, do you?”   


“Absolutely not,” and that answer is so spontaneous that really, Eichi can’t help closing a hand and bring it to his mouth to hide a higher chuckle. His eyes, though, drift to the object of that small talk, and just its sight washes away part of the amusement to leave only a sad smile.    
Looking at him from afar, Keito looks much older than he should be, his lovely face painted with a frown that oh, he wishes he could kiss away, clean with a gentle stroke of his fingers. He expected him to lose his temper in minutes, being so close with Wataru, but he guesses Keito is still able to surprise him after all this time, after all.    


Fireflies dance around them, resting on the side of the pond, on the white cape around his shoulders. Sometimes, they guide him to the most remote side of his mind, making him feel like he’s falling in an empty space, dark and thick like ink. Keito is still in front of him, Wataru too, and he’s sure that Tori is talking to Tsumugi, asking him something about dinner, but he doesn’t recognise the words because they are too far, even if everybody is sitting inches away from him. While he smiles, his heart skips one, two, three heartbeats to remind him of how fragile he really is, and with a soft sigh, Eichi wonders when he will be finally free, and when he will lift the world of his presence.    
Sometimes, he feels like it’s only a matter of time.

 

It is incredible, how nights and days run after each others without taking a break, stars rising and setting in a perpetual cycle that nothing can interrupt, nor magic or God if he really exists. It is incredible, how he can find comfort in the darkest nights when, thinking about his childhood, he cried when his body felt like it was about to break, and he silently whispered  _ I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.  _ Something is wrong, he feels it in the way his heart starts to bit faster, anxious and syncopated, as if it was chased by a metaphorical beast ready to rip the muscle apart if it catches it between its teeth. Under his feet, the floor is starting to move, changing into forms he can’t follow with his eyes without feeling nauseous; if he still was a child Keito would be there by his side, holding his hand and rubbing his back to help him calm down, and remind him how he is supposed to breathe. His shaking hand goes to find support on the cold wall, while his throat starts to feel itchy, and the first fit of cough catches him unprepared, forcing him to bend and wrap his stomach.  _ Breathe _ , he repeats to himself, closing his eyes and trying to focus on the air trying to fight the urge to cough again to reach his lungs, fill them with oxygen and giving it time to burn into carbon dioxide - but it is hard when the first hints of iron stains the tip of his throat and makes him feel dizzy already.    


_ I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die,  _ is the mantra repeating in his head, while his feet move on their own in a useless attempt to reach his room and call for help. He knows he won’t reach it - there is never time, when his illness strikes him all of sudden, when his lungs shut down and the only thing he is left with is the fear to hit the floor and close his eyes forever - but he must try, at least, before it’s too late.    


Before everything goes to waste.   


He squeezes his eyes, trying to fight back another fit, feeling his eyes sting with tears he doesn’t want to let go, and he has to stop because the pain is too much to bear, and the air too thin to make him breathe properly. Another fit, another cough, and the tip of his white shoes stain with red, as well as his hand, as well as the hem of the cape around his shoulders. His energies are burning out, just like the flames of those candles enlightening Keito’s room, and it’s a matter of seconds before his knees give up, and he finds himself shaken by a spasm that makes his back arch. Iron fills his mouth again and again, invading his tongue, and going back to his throat and sit in his stomach. As much as he would love to be in control of his body, there’s nothing left to do but surrender to the stroke that’s possessing his limbs, squeezing his neck to make him whine like a wild beast meeting its end.     


The last thing crossing Eichi’s mind is Keito’s worried frown, Keito’s voice begging him to stay conscious, and the insistent mantra trying to keep him alive. Then, he hits the floor with his hand, and the world turns off. 


End file.
